


Whatever That's About

by pinstripedJackalope



Series: The World Anew (Also Indulging Pale Urges) [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Panic Attacks, Past Abuse, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, selective mutism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2019-01-15 15:36:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12323907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinstripedJackalope/pseuds/pinstripedJackalope
Summary: The Strider household the day after the game ends.





	Whatever That's About

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a series but honestly... this could stand alone, and I may not finish the other works, so do with it what you will. I really just thought this should be posted.

Tick, tock.  Tick, tock.  Tick… tick… tick…

Dave sat up, and the whole world spun around him.  Or, at least, that was what it felt like.  Like a bunch of molecules just up and decided to get their jive on.  Like Miley’s ass was the place he inhabited, and she was twerking for all she was worth.  Unfortunately, his aspect was this funny thing called time, not Space, so he couldn’t really be sure about what was really going on.  The twerking?  Possibly fictive.  He knew nothing about the real world except that it was exactly three forty-eight in the afternoon on the twelfth of April, of the Great Year of our Lord two thousand and nine.  And that his head hurt like a mother’s fucker. 

What the shit was the last thing he remembered?  Slow, painful triumph, that was what.  And then time in the medium got funny.  And it was unlike anything he’d ever experienced in his life—a moment like suffocating on air except the air was every second that was supposed to be ticking past but wasn’t, growing and growing until suddenly it POPPED and one by one every atom in his being turned unreal, spinning and swirling in a mess of code, he could no longer find a single millisecond to hold onto, and everything went black.

Well.  He looked around, inspecting his room.  No matter how hard he squinted and frowned, it still looked like his room.  Covered in shitty photos and dead shitty things in jars and shitty sunlight coming in from the shitty sky at all the shittiest angles because it was shitty o’clock and FUCK HE WAS HOME.

He was halfway through a daydream of falling onto the floor and kissing it soundly, over and over (only a daydream—the Strider Face was not to be disturbed without impunity), when he realized what that meant.  The game was over.  The end screen had HAPPENED.  And whatever thing that the game decided was endgame spoils or not-so-spoils was occurring, right at that very moment, whether he liked it or not.  And he had no fucking idea if endgame status included his big Bro, in the flesh.

No time like three fifty-two in the afternoon on the twelfth of April, of the Great Year of our Lord two thousand and nine, to find out. 

God, that was annoying.  It was like the music from a peppy Christmas commercial, it just kept popping into his head without warning.  He wondered if the time tinglies would wear off any tingly time soon.

After a moment to check that his shades were on his face (no knowing who was watching, the game had fixed any assumption he may have once had that he was ever completely alone), Dave stood up.  And promptly fell out of his bed.  Dang, why had he not thought that through?  If he wasn’t on the floor upon waking, then obviously he was somewhere not-on-the-floor, and the place not on the floor was probably the bed.  Duh.  Come on, Strider.  Had the game fucked him up that badly?

He spent a moment on his rump with his face scrunched up as far as it would go, riding out some labor-pains of the brain.  No, this was probably not any more fucked up than any particularly difficult morning.  Being torn to shreds and repurposed again after years in a video game felt about the same as pulling a few all-nighters and then sleeping for sixteen hours straight.  Maybe there was some coffee in one of the hidden crannies in the living room where they kept food (because obviously fridges were for WEAPONS, RIGHT??? Fuck he had a lot to get used to again).  Taking the deepest of breaths, he slowly stood again, double checking his balance until an ice age later (seven seconds) when he was finally at his most vertical.  He stood still for a moment, feeling around his body.  Man, were all thirteen year olds this small?  He guessed so.  This was gonna suck some major hairy balls.  With the care of the recently reanimated, he began shuffling toward the door.

The apartment was… well, quiet.  Like always.  Unless there was a strife or some sick video games in the happen, this was how it always was.  And unless Bro was having an off day, he could expect the big guy to show up in 3… 2… 1…

Nothing.  Interesting.  Maybe Bro was having the same kind of day he was.  With a mental note to go knock on the other bedroom’s door as soon as he had something in his ravenous stomach, Dave angled his weary body toward the living room.

It took no time at all (precisely twenty-seven minutes) to discover that no, actually nothing had changed in here since the last time he was in the real world.  Not on the game trail that wound from his room and out to the food, anyway.  What a fucking shame.  Stuffing crackers into his mouth, Dave settled at his computer and booted it up.  Bro’s porn sites might give him some clue as to where his supposed guardian was located atm, but to be completely honest he didn’t much care about Bro as soon as his password (bootyl1cious) was punched into the pesterchum login.

Looked like someone was excited.

 

ectoBiologist began trolling turntechGodhead

EB: DAVE.  DUDE.  TELL ME YOU ARE SEEING WHAT I’M SEEING RIGHT NOW.

EB: BY WHICH I GUESS I MEAN TELL ME THAT YOU ARE SEEING FAMILIAR THINGS IN A SIMILAR SCENE IN YOUR APARTMENT ACROSS THE COUNTRY.

EB: IF YOU HAVEN’T YET DO ME A BILLION FAVORS AND GO THROW OPEN A WINDOW AND LOOK OUT.

EB: SEE THAT?

EB: THAT, MY FRIEND, IS THE WORLD.

EB: FRESH, LOVELY EARTH AND SKY AND AIR AND

EB: I NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS WOULD HAVE SAID THAT I WAS HAPPY TO SEE A CAKE BY MY BED SIDE BUT

EB: OH MAN

EB: OH MAN OH MAN OH MAN

EB: JUST… DUUUUUUUUUUUDE

ectoBiologist has become an idle chum

EB: okay so I think I’ve calmed down.  it’s been so long since I have had a sugar high, you have no idea how rough it is. 

EB: I was so hyper I guess I kinda became karkat for a while whoops :B

EB: honestly though, this is something else.

EB: like something amazing

EB: right?

EB: okay dude

EB: gimme a high five

EB: c’mon

EB: or something at least.

EB: please

EB: …

EB: are you… are you there?

EB: …

EB: sigh

EB: I guess things would be just a smidge better if anybody were responding to me

EB: well, rose pestered me a bit ago just to check in, but she’s preoccupied.

EB: makes sense, I guess.  I can’t blame her.

EB: and she tells me that jade seems to be awake and well, too.

EB: she doesn’t seem all that worried that you haven’t responded to anyone yet.

EB: so I guess I trust her.

EB: it would just be kinda nice to not be worried.

EB: hmm.

EB: oh, there’s jade.

EB: talk to you later, dude.

ectoBiologist has become an idle chum

TG: hey bro

EB: DAVE

TG: thats me

TG: sorry to keep you waiting

TG: had some things to be cool and suave about you know

EB: you had that awful headache too, didn’t you?

TG: yep

EB: but you’re okay now?

 

Dave rubbed a bit at his temple, as if he could make the last painful dregs of the game go away.  Somewhere in the depths of the apartment he heard a soft swoosh, the barely there pattering of footsteps—a sign that Bro was indeed alive, and indeed here.  He tried to tell himself that he wasn’t disappointed.  That didn’t stop a small sigh from escaping between his teeth.

 

TG: dude if okay is a cool guy with the sickest fucking comix in the world then yes call me okay

TG: okay is my pen name and my stage name and my maiden name too

TG: okay isnt a phase mom

TG: its a lifestyle

EB: good.  I don’t know what I would do if I lost one of you guys.

EB: the game was just so much, so long and I missed you soo much while I was on that ship with jade and i

EB: I really wish I could hug you right now

TG: oh no are you crying

EB: maybe

TG: fuck bro sorry i didnt respond sooner okay just

TG: aaaaah pretend that im hugging you

TG: tightest of hugs right now aight so tight your spleen is gonna pop out your eye sockets like a fresh piece of popcorn

TG: i dont even know what im saying but thats how tight this fucking hug is

EB: …thanks, Dave.

TG: no problem

TG: we have got to do something about this crosscountry thing

TG: it just isnt gonna cut it anymore

EB: I know, right??

EB: I didn’t have time to pitch it to rose but I don’t think it would be that hard to get her and Roxy to come live here.

TG: her mom is there

EB: or maybe I could get jane to help me convince dad to go there?  They probably have more space :?

TG: jane as in your grandma

TG: wait

TG: isnt your grandma like

TG: dead

EB: no???

EB: I mean she was before but

EB: haven’t you seen dirk?

TG: uh

TG: ill be right back

turntechGodhead has disconnected

 

Deep breath.  Dave sucked in air until his lungs were screaming, then he leaned back in his chair and listened as hard as he could.  There was no way Dirk was here.  Right?  AND Bro?  Who the fuck was…?

He was pretty much expecting a very large amount of smuppets to fall on his head at any point during his journey back across the apartment, but he made it from one end to the other without encountering a single moving thing.  Even the air conditioner was off—the only thing giving some semblance of relief from the now setting sun was his own open window.  Bro’s door was cracked, which usually meant he was out somewhere and didn’t want his room to become a sweltering cesspool by the time he came back, but if he wasn’t there and he wasn’t anywhere else, then where was he?

It took a moment for the answer to alight in Dave’s mind.  The roof.  The fucker was on the roof.  “Of all the hellacious anti-miracles,” he said to himself, picking up the nearest weapon and shoving it into his sylladex.  Which responded with a CRACK and a flash of light.  He forgot to account for the fact that he had literally no idea what was already in there because FUCK if he could remember what he’d been keeping on his person the day before the day they started the game, and the Nunchaku (2+1+2+2+2+1+2+1=13/10=3) ejected a Gummy Worm Pack (2+1+2+2+2+2+1+2+2+2+1+2+2=23/10=3) that he had absolutely no idea was in there, where the heck did that come from and _why wasn’t detect collisions on._   He dodged the candies easily, but his heart was still pounding as he straightened up.  Taking a careful peak into his sylladex, he spotted nothing less than absolute chaos, a cacophony of assorted junk food and art paraphernalia.  He closed it again with a mystified squint at nothing in particular.  Why was he like this when he was thirteen?  What the fuck kind of...?

A note on the floor under the trapdoor to the roof caught his attention.  He hadn’t noticed it before, but the gummy worm cannon fodder had dislodged it from where it had obviously been taped to the trapdoor’s pull string.  ‘Hey’ it said.  Weird.  Not typical Bro vernacular, but the guy was known to be generally un-understandable.  ‘I’m on the roof.  Come up if you wanna. -Dirk’

Dave… stared.  Then looked up.  Then _bolted_.  Up the ladder he went in record time (three point seven four seconds), rising into the blinding light of a Houston sunset.  It wasn’t fast enough.  His fingers scrambled at the rungs and his feet hit the rooftop so fast that he nearly slid.  It took but a moment to discern a silhouette standing on the far side of the roof, his normally immaculate hair in disarray.  Dave drank him in as he approached, slow enough not to run him over but still not able to contain himself—the untucked black tank top instead of the white polo shirt, the trim shoulders not quite old enough to be sheathed in twenty years’ worth of strifing muscle, the lack of hat, the way he was just standing there looking out over the city like he’d never seen something quite like it in all his life. 

One step forward, two, and he felt more than saw his brother’s gaze turn to him.  It was definitely his bro, but in the pointy shades he couldn’t see Bro’s distanced, calculating looks—he saw naught but a kid who was a few slim years older than he was, a kid who was more lost than Dave had ever been.

“Hey,” Dave murmured, crossing the last bit of roof separating them.  “Sup?”

He wasn’t expecting the hoarseness of Dirk’s voice as he responded.  “Look at all these buildings.  And cars.  There are so many people.”

“Yeah, it’s a city,” Dave said.  As he watched, Dirk’s statuesque face cracked right down the middle, tears streaking down his cheeks.

 

* * *

 

 

“Okay.  Can you hear me?”

Dirk only nodded.  “We’re both here,” Dave said, setting the phone on the kitchen table.  Dirk’s shoulders were painfully hunched, his eyes staring unfocused at the table through his shades.  He’d finally stopped crying a few minutes ago, but other than some truly meek noises he’d uttered nothing in the time that Dave had spent trying to calm him down and talk to him (three hours, twelve minutes, and seven seconds).  As far as Dave could tell, he was experiencing something rather close to ‘oh fuck there is an entire world that I’ve never even been able to imagine before and suddenly I’m living in it’, which was, Dave was sure, a pretty profound thing to be experiencing. 

He only hoped that Rose could do something about the terrifying muteness thing, because he hadn’t made a dent in it and fuck but it didn’t seem good for any of those involved.

“Good.  Dirk, can you take some deep breaths for me?  In through the nose, out through the mouth.  You can do it with me.”  Dave watched in a fit of silent anxiety as Dirk closed his eyes and took a shallow breath in, in time with the staticky rush of Rose’s inhale.  The air hitched in his throat for a moment, not unlike the way it did as he cried, but he managed to keep himself under control.  She exhaled, and Dirk followed, until a few minutes had passed. 

“It’s important for me to know how much you can communicate right now,” Rose said, soft.  “Can you type?  Nod or shake your head, and Dave can translate.”

Dirk gave a bewildered shrug.  “I’m not sure,” Dave said.  “What do I need to do?  Should I go grab something to, like…?”  He trailed off, unable to even think of an end to the thought.  His fingers itched, and it took him fifteen whole seconds to realize that they wanted to reach out to Dirk like John always did to him when he was upset.

“That’s okay.  It’s okay, Dave.  Becoming nonverbal in reaction to stress or overstimulation isn’t as rare as you would think.  There are different levels of nonverbal-ness, as it were, some allowing for text-based communication if not for vocalization.”  Every one of Rose’s sentences was as sure and smooth as always, a carefully constructed vocalization of her own, made with the explicit purpose of carrying across exactly what she meant for you to hear, sarcasm or sincerity.  This whole thing was really doing a number on Dave—something about watching Dirk in distress was suddenly the most acutely painful feeling in the world, whatever that was about—but with Rose there, even over the airwaves, everything felt a little bit better. 

Rose hummed thoughtfully, preparing another question.  Dirk’s unmistakable panic was still very much there, but her calm, even pacing was obviously doing more good than Dave fluttering about like a crow with its feathers ruffled.  “Has this happened before, Dirk?” she asked after a moment, cadence soothing.

Another shrug, this one quick and jerky, and for the first time Dirk’s eyes rose to meet Dave’s.  In them was an almost animal-like fear, like some creature being backed into a corner.  Dave slid his hands into his pockets, thought better of it, and instead picked up the phone again to pace.  “I’m not sure if this is the time for a medical history, Rose.”

“This isn’t an examination,” she said, and Dave wanted to wring some of her calmness right out of her.  How was she able to keep her voice so damn steady?  Couldn’t she share some of that unperturbed sureness?  She sounded entirely in her element as she continued.  “If he has experience with this, then asking him for his boundaries instead of floundering around will make this better and easier for both of you.”

By the time she finished, Dirk had one hand in the air, hesitantly reaching for the phone.  Dave handed it over without complaint, sidling over to a cabinet to search for one of the two cups in the apartment.  He contemplated trying to find some ice (ice was good for panic, right?), but it was unlikely that there would be any.  Ice didn’t exist in this apartment.  This was the original land of heat and clockwork.  Dave felt his chest begin to tighten, but he managed to grab the Winnie The Pooh cup and get it under the faucet, cool water splashing all over the countertops and floor.  Behind him, he heard the slow hunt-and-peck tapping of Dirk’s fingers on the screen, as if he were having trouble arranging his every thought to find the letters he needed.  Soon enough, though, Rose was breathing out with an, “Oooh.”

“What?” Dave asked, desperately tempted to lean down and read over Dirk’s shoulder, but Rose had already begun phrasing another question.  Dirk slowly sank back down into his hunch, now curled around the phone.  Seeing as he wasn’t needed, Dave brought over the glass as soon as it was decently full of water (two minutes two seconds) and put it onto the table beside his brother before he absconded.

God, that was… that was brutal.  For three minutes on the dot he just stood in the middle of the living room, trying to collect himself.  This place was throwing him off.  It wasn’t just the heat, or the shitty swords in the fridge, or the fact that he’d felt literal, tangible relief flow up from his stomach and out his eyes when he’d gotten to the meteor with Rose way back when because he knew that he would have _three years_ guaranteed free of this apartment.  That was bad.  The problem now was that all of that was made ten times worse by this gut-wrenching certainty that Bro was still around the next corner.  Even Dirk’s presence just a room over couldn’t rid him of the urge to put his back to a wall.

“C’mon, man,” Dave murmured to himself, sliding a hand beneath his shades to rub his face.  “This is ridiculous.  Grab your big boy pants and pull ‘em up.  Gotta deal with the wedgies before the wedgies deal with you.”

Twenty-two more seconds and he almost had his watering eyes under control.  It had just occurred to him that he couldn’t pester John without his phone unless he slunk back to his room when there was a tap on his shoulder.

He wished he could say that he didn’t flinch and immediately go for his sword, his brain screaming ‘I-told-you-so’s, but he did, and Dirk saw.  The strained muscles in Dirk’s face would have been imperceptible to anyone else but another Strider.  Dave decided that he really, really didn’t like being a Strider right now.  He cleared his throat, tipping back on his heels until he was perched on his ass on the edge of the futon, his arms crossed.  The picture of cool and collected.  The stuttering, too, was completely planned.  “S-so, uh… how are… things?”

Dirk’s lips were a line in his face.  Dave looked him up and down for a moment, eyes flicking up and down behind his shades, searching for a sign to clear up the kid’s current mental state.  He still looked… lost.  A child who got separated from their mom in the produce aisle and had just been convinced to stop crying with a crusty old lollipop that was found hanging out in a little plastic bin at one of the cash registers.  Aside from that, he was again carved from stone, the cold, hard visage that reminded Dave of the guy he first met in the Game.  With nothing to go on but the knowledge that Dirk had spent the last three hours actually fucking sobbing, Dave couldn’t do much but try and hold his own head together and wait for Dirk to give him something.  Anything.  God, how long was the guy going to just stand there?  A millennium?

Seventeen seconds.  It was seventeen seconds before Dave realized that his brother was holding his own phone out to him.  He grabbed it and was about to shove it in his pocket and let Dirk abscond when he noticed that an app was still open on the screen.  Orange text, not an original setting of the note-taker app.  He wasn’t even sure if the app had the option to change the text color.  Dirk couldn’t have his hands on technology for five seconds without messing with it. 

It was that little detail that finally made the tears streak down Dave’s face.

He was in so far over his head.  There was too much here, too much to handle, he didn’t have the sheer number of years it would take to process all these emotions.  He thought he knew a little about what Dirk was experiencing, now, because all the thoughts in his headspace suddenly felt like mentos and coke.

Dirk still hadn’t made a sound, but when Dave shucked off his shades and threw them to the floor, shoulders shaking, he felt a weight settle next to him.  “Sorry, dude,” Dave said, voice wavering even worse than it had in the kitchen.  He was making a fucking mess out of this, he knew he was, but he couldn’t stop and he wanted Dirk to understand.  “I just need to… like… it’s all inside of me and I need to get it _out_.”  He laughed through the tears, because damn, all those years of rapping and that was the best he could do?  That wasn’t even a metaphor.

The hand that rested like a butterfly on his shoulder just made him laugh harder.  Dirk was now trying to comfort him, and doing about as good a job as he himself had done earlier.  There was something very, very wrong with this picture.  So incredibly wrong that he didn’t even have enough words to begin to describe it.

Fingers slack, Dave nearly dropped the phone.  It probably would have bounced under the futon into the land of Stale Cheetos if Dirk’s fingers hadn’t closed around it.  He let Dirk take it back without a fuss, just praying to the Creator that Rose wasn’t having a peep-fest into the hot mess that was the current Strider household.  It occurred to him that she might have some quality, only semi-bullshit psychobabble advice to impart if she were.  The laughter and sobs were now tied in the race to get up his throat, bottlenecking at the back of his tongue, and Dave was forced to hold his stomach for fear that it would split open to let them out.  Tick, tock, tick, tock, the second hand was like a sword cutting time into little tiny bits and he had to watch as every little one slipped past, dancing around the aborted gasps making their way out his mouth.

“ _This isn’t very Strider-esque_ ,” said a low, clipped electronic voice that Dave recognized as his phone’s text-to-speech software.  It sounded even funnier when someone was hysterically crying than it did when he and Sollux used it to read aloud bad bucket fics outside Karkat’s door.

It was only the sobering realization that he had no idea if the trolls were alive that allowed Dave to catch his breath.  “The crying is ironic, obviously,” he said once he’d managed to find air again, his head cradled in the crook of his elbow and that elbow propped on the armrest beside him.  His other hand was still wrapped around his middle, the closest he could ever remember being to a hug in this apartment.

Dirk snorted, taking three point two seconds to type out another message.  His fingers were no longer stuttering on the keyboard, now as fast and precise as he ever was.  “ _Nah.  Irony is out for the night.  The irony of a dude growing up in a world without people and then waking up here AFTER everything went to shit broke the irony dispenser.  Can’t get it fixed for three to five business days_.”

Deep breath.  In, out.  “Can I tell you something that would be a blasphemy if Bro were here?” Dave asked.  Just the asking was a blasphemy, but he found that he didn’t care.  Dirk tapped gently on his shoulder, and Dave raised his head to meet his brother’s eyes.  Without his shades on he could almost see the curve of Dirk’s iris, the creases at the corners of his lids.  Dirk nodded, encouragement to speak. 

“I want my friends,” Dave said.  The reality of how much he’d come to rely on having them close tasted like acid, making him swallow hard.  “The humans, the trolls, the Mayor…”

One corner of Dirk’s lips lifted a millimeter, and he tapped the phone again.  The original message that he’d handed to Dave came up again, filling the screen.

“Oh shit,” Dave said, wiping his face.  “I’m sorry, I fucked that right the fuck up, let me see—“

Dirk leaned away, a real smile finally breaking across his face as Dave squawked and grabbed at the phone.  He had a few years and a few inches on Dave, but sitting side by side they were almost evenly matched.  Six point nine seconds later they were both on the floor, Dirk barely holding onto his title as Carrier of the Cellular Device, his arms spread wide.  Dave laughed, his head pillowed by Dirk’s stomach as he tried to untangle all of his limbs.  The fall had knocked the air from Dirk, and his silent, puffing laughter made Dave’s head bob.  They were probably writhing around in thirteen years’ worth of taco wrappers, but neither of them cared.  “Just play it, already,” Dave giggled, feeling ridiculous.  Something like this would never have happened in this apartment before the game.  It was surreal.  The whole world was surreal—the crows in the windows, the few faded stars that made it past the smog and light pollution of Houston, the fact that Bro really was gone.  Gone for real. 

Dirk clicked his teeth together and squirmed a little until Dave realized that he probably didn’t appreciate being used as a cushion.  The guy had been utterly alone most of his life—he probably liked familial contact even less than Bro had.  The very edges of icy anxiety started to nip at Dave’s lungs as he sat up.  He was searching for the right words to tell Dirk how sorry he was for… well, everything, when he found the phone in his face.

_ I’m sorry for scaring you earlier.  If it’s okay with you, I’d appreciate a hug. _

Looking from the orange text to Dirk’s masked face, Dave tried to find the irony.  There wasn’t any.  The statement was direct, unembellished.  Un-Strider-Like.  It seemed that the trend, going strong, was set to continue.  “Are you sure?” he breathed, waiting for the ‘ha!  Gotcha!’ moment.  It didn’t come.  Dirk lowered the phone to the grimy floor, nodding.

Dave didn’t look back.  Without letting himself think, he grabbed onto his brother and held him tight.  It was awkward, he was leaning over too far and pushing Dirk’s back into the futon, but he couldn’t help it.  His arms squeezed Dirk’s middle.  He was probably gripping too tight, and the angle meant that his face was smushed against Dirk’s shoulder.  He didn’t care.  His tongue tried to apologize for the embrace and he bit down on it. 

He wanted nothing more than to just… stay like that.  Even though every memory of Bro told him this was wrong.  Even though his skin remembered smuppets in place of human contact.  Nothing growing up had prepared him for this moment, and his awful traitor brain tried to supply him with strifes, suplexes, bruises—so many that he had to remind himself again.  This was NOT that.  This was… good.  It was okay to like this.  It was okay. 

Dirk’s skin was clammy, tank top still sweat-dampened from his earlier panic attack—he was stiff like he’d tensed his entire core.  His hands slowly formed fists against Dave’s back.  Dave counted three cursed seconds before he reluctantly went to pull away, assuming by the stiffness that Dirk had had enough contact for the night.  He got all of two inches away before Dirk made a tiny, strangled sound reminiscent of a newborn kitten, following him.

“…Stay?” Dirk croaked, vocal chords strained and tongue so uncoordinated that he nearly made the word three syllables.  His hands unfolded again, and Dave realized that they were shaking, exhaustion setting in. 

Dave could only nod, settling back in.  He experimentally rubbed Dirk’s back, trying to mimic the warm, soothing hugs that John bestowed.  “It’s nice to hear your voice,” he said, and he felt Dirk’s chin settle against his neck.  The weight of Dirk’s tired arms around him was a feeling that he’d never dared imagine.  He could sense Dirk’s consciousness beginning to flag, the physical toll of crying taking him down.  Dave snuggled up closer, supporting him.  Tick…tock…tick…tock… Dirk’s breathing slowed, his hair brushing Dave’s ear as his head sank.

Dave held on.  Fifty seconds, two minutes, more.  For the first time in a long time, counting the passing seconds felt less like a curse and more like a reminder of how precious time could be.


End file.
